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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he modern multinational corporation obviously could not exist if not for the state. The current administration (George W. Bush) has so successfully blurred the line between corporation and government that a major architect of foreign policy and a major defense contractor are the same man – I’m referring to Dick Cheney of course.
When Cheney was Secretary of Defense, he worked with a subsidary of Halliburton (KBR) to develop a plan to privatize many of the functions of the military, such as running commisaries. This netted Halliburton billions in dollars in contracts over the next twenty years. Cheney was rewarded for developing these contracts with a CEO position at Halliburton. From there he became Vice President, and engineered the most profitable war Halliburton has ever seen.
Halliburton also uses the vast overhead of the government contracts to invest in risky oil exploration, and thus in some very real sense, the risks of such investments are passed on to taxpayers, while Halliburton ultimately controls what oil (and the profits thereof) it does find.
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Of course, Halliburton is an extreme example. But all of the major international corporations work hand in hand with governments around the world to secure markets for themselves, to eliminate competition, and to keep labor in check. The soft money of lobbyists becomes the hard money of government contracts, which in turn becomes financing capital to keep these multinationals afloat.
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Of course, these corporations hardly need the US government anymore. Fifty years [actually many more—Eds] of feeding at the trough has made them large enough that inertia will keep them going. It’s the economy of scale – the bigger you are, the bigger the mistakes you can make and still recover from. Mom & Pop can’t compete againsta multinational, because a multinational has the resources to crush them. Who coudl build a better Wal-Mart without engaging in the same practices as Wal-Mart? No one. The government, which clearly helped create and empower the multinationals, is paradoxically the only check against their power. Removed of regulations, the multinationals would become totally uncontrolled, with nothing serving as a check against them.
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So, to bring this back to libertarianism. Libertarians are divided on the issue of corporations. The Libertarian Party supports a pro-corporate agenda that would hand over total control over all of this nation’s natural resources to multinationals (when they sell the national parks, who could outbid the multinationals?). The GOP uses libertarianesque arguments to justify measures that strengthen corporations by deregulating them, while simulateanously supporting massive (and clearly unlibertarian) handouts like the prescription drug benefit plan. But some libertarians, such as apotheon claim to be anti-corporate.
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However, I have never seen any suggestions from anti-corporate libertarians on what is to be done about corporations. Anti-corporate libertarians seem to believe that it is wrong for the government to take any action against corporations, which seems to leave only hope and blind faith in the “free market” to address the problem.
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Can anyone explain to me how anti-corporate libertarians address the issues of corporations? Or is it only the libertarians whose philosophy forces them to sit on their hands and bitch rather than do anything that is anti-corporate?
We come across the following predicament on a libertarian blog. Take a listen:
Corporations
Cheney: perfect avatar of corporatism, Mussolini’s own definition of fascism.
(Kenneth (
ex_lovecraf) wrote in 
libertarianism,
When Cheney was Secretary of Defense, he worked with a subsidary of Halliburton (KBR) to develop a plan to privatize many of the functions of the military, such as running commisaries. This netted Halliburton billions in dollars in contracts over the next twenty years. Cheney was rewarded for developing these contracts with a CEO position at Halliburton. From there he became Vice President, and engineered the most profitable war Halliburton has ever seen.
A libertarian probes the logical soundness of some core libertarian principles and finds them…wobbly.
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The Libertarian Party supports a pro-corporate agenda that would hand over total control over all of this nation’s natural resources to multinationals…
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Can anyone explain to me how anti-corporate libertarians address the issues of corporations? Or is it only the libertarians whose philosophy forces them to sit on their hands and bitch rather than do anything that is anti-corporate?
